Mute
by Networkling
Summary: Rin used to talk a lot. You didn't trust her with your secrets, because she just couldn't keep her mouth shut. When her loose lips almost got a girl killed though, the only thing that left Rin's lips anymore was silence.


"To live is to be haunted." – Philip K. Dick

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Ayuko Motoya. That name haunted Rin at all times of the day. In the morning, the very wee hours, she would bolt awake panting, drenched in sweat, brown eyes wide as that name floated through her conscious. In the morning, the non-wee hours, she would sit at her family's dining room table, silently shoveling cereal into her mouth as that name drifted in front of her eyes, invisible to the people around her. At school, during the afternoon, that name would fill her ears as she glided through the hallways, shoulders hunched to avoid the cutting glares her fellow students shot her way. In the evening, as she browsed the web on her Toshiba laptop, the glowing characters would jumble together to spell that name.

Why was that name so important to her though, such a lasting memory? Well you see, Rin Fujinami nearly got Ayuko Motoya killed.

That's not something you forget. Like Ayuko's name, that's not an event that would just disappear off the radar. When someone ends up in the hospital, in a coma which persists to this day three months later, you simply can't forget. You can't shove it away. It lasts, it hurts, it stabs. It would be shameful, more than shameful, if Rin simply forgot Ayuko, and what Rin did that caused Ayuko's pain.

You see, three months ago, at Rin's high school, she had a bit of a reputation. That reputation was not a good one. She was known as the Secret Spiller. You didn't tell her secrets because she couldn't keep her mouth shut. She was always blabbing, online, in the hallways, in front of the school gates, in the locker rooms, anywhere. Her high-pitched, feminine voice could always be heard trying to fill the silence, whether awkward or not. Sometimes she filled that silence with celebrity gossip, other times; she spilled secrets told to her in strictest confidentiality. She just couldn't help herself.

Then Ayuko Motoya came in. She was a sweet girl with brown hair and brown eyes. She was a bit of an outcast, taller than most of the other girls thanks to her dad's Russian heritage. She didn't make many friends right off the bat, but she chose to befriend someone she most certainly shouldn't have. Rin. The two became fast friends, one lunch conversation and they were best friends forever.

One day, only week after meeting Rin who Ayuko felt like someone she'd known forever, Ayuko confided in Rin that she was gay. Rin had no problem with it, she was an accepting person, but living in a bit of rural town, there were quite a few people who weren't as open. When Rin blabbed one day, away from Ayuko, she told the wrong person because the next day, all over the school were posters of Ayuko with the word fag written all over them. Spray-painted onto her locker was that very same slur, and pictures of men who'd molested little boys. She was spat at, people pushed her, knocked over her books, spoke about her in very loud, malicious tones when she was around, and all in all, were very wicked.

Then it happened, a week and a half after the secret had been spilled and the friendship between Ayuko and Rin had gone up in flames like London had so long ago. On her way home from school after an after-school detention, a gang of students pulled Ayuko aside with crow bars and metal pipes, and went to town. Broken rips, a punctured lung, certainly brain damage, and much more were the price of a broken friendship and a spilled secret, and the culmination of homophobia and hatred.

Something like that was not a forgettable happening. That was why the name haunted her everywhere she went, why it filled the silence that had existed since Ayuko had closed her eyes three months ago. No one knew if she would ever wake up. The doctors said there was a chance, but it was unlikely. The probability leaned in her becoming a permanent vegetable, that she would likely never wake. It tore at Rin, ripped up her insides and tormented her sanity at that thought.

For the girl whose reputation was to be loud, to spill secrets, since that day there was not a peep, not a secret shared, not another person hurt.

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**AN: **Thank you for reading the prologue! I know it's short, the next chapters will be longer. Please review. The more reviews I get, the more incentive I have to write the next chapter quicker.


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